


Remembrance.

by MonsterTesk



Series: Doornails and Daisies [3]
Category: Justified
Genre: Amnesia, M/M, Nightmares, like the kind basically only found in fiction, really medically inaccurate memory loss
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2014-02-17
Updated: 2016-09-19
Packaged: 2018-01-12 19:23:18
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 7
Words: 18,315
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1196556
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/MonsterTesk/pseuds/MonsterTesk
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>"My name is Boyd Crowder and I live in Harlan, Kentucky."</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> I had planned on making this much longer. Like I have all the pieces already built in to this half for doing so but I kind of like ending it here.  
> I don't know. Maybe I'll change my mind but for right now this is it.

He's got black hair that sticks up everywhere and looks like it's trying to run away from his forehead. His eyes are a dirty green and his lips are both full and thin. His body is slim and he's got a scar on his chest that's round and white and old. Boyd stares at this stranger and tries on a smile. He says:  
"My name is Boyd Crowder. I'm from Harlan, Kentucky."  
The man mouths the words back but Boyd still doesn't recognize him. He sighs and looks away from the mirror, picks up his toothbrush and brushes unfamiliar teeth.  
-  
"I made you pecan pancakes, Boyd. You like 'em," Ava Crowder says. She smiles in what looks to be a soothing expression and brandishes a cup of coffee. He smiles and takes it from her.  
"Thank you kindly, Miss Ava," he responds, sitting down at her kitchen table. Her smile turns tight. He looks away.  
Boyd Crowder does like pecan pancakes. He picks up the jar of peach preserves to smear on them. Ava's hand shoots out.  
"You'll like it better with the syrup, Boyd," she tells him, removing her hand quickly as if to apologize. Boyd sets down the jar and picks up the bottle of syrup. He tries not to think on how she says his name too much.  
Like he'll remember who he is if she tells him enough.  
-  
He's sitting on the porch swing, one leg stretched out into the empty space next to him and the other hanging off the side, a book in his hands. It's got dog ears and parts where the pages ripple like the water he must have held it near. The words are all new to him- both the typed and the handwritten notes in the margins.  
There's a section that's underlined three times. It says, "It should be the greatest thing, so why are your dreams worse? Why is there more blood in the sink in the morning?" In handwriting he has been told is his- is Boyd's- next to it there's a note. "Expectation verses reality. Objectively, this isn't a good thing."  
-  
"I've got to run to a friend's house. Check on his place while he's away. I'll be back in an hour," Ava tells him.  
He doesn't ask if he can come with. He has before and it's the only place she doesn't take him with her.  
But she always comes back with this pinched expression and calls him Boyd twice a sentence.  
-  
Boyd tags along grocery shopping with Ava. People look at him funny. Like they know something about him that he doesn't.  
But then again, now even strangers know more about him than he does. Ava stops next to a display of pasta, chewing on her lip. Boyd stands next to her, hands on the cart and tries to seem relaxed. It's difficult to do simply because he doesn't know what relaxed looks like for him. A woman with brown hair, a young pretty thing, eyes him as if he's a particularly unwelcome insect.  
"I'm gonna make pasta tonight," Ava says and snags a box of rigatoni off the shelf. Boyd has no input.  
"Oh, but now I need some tomatoes. Boyd, you mind standing guard on the cart while I run to get them?"  
Boyd leans his elbows on the cart, smiles at her, and nods.  
"I'll stay right here."  
She smiles and walks off down the aisle. Boyd straightens. Apparently he doesn't like leaning on the cart and turns his eyes to the display of pastas. He wonders which one he likes as he tries not to give too much attention to the woman across the way.  
She walks past, hissing, "must be nice to get a clean slate. Not have to pay for your sins, Crowder."  
He stands completely still and doesn't say a thing until Ava gets back.  
"What's the matter, Boyd?" Ava asks, frown on her face, the fingers of her free hand curling around his elbow like she's forgotten her rule about touching him.  
"Nothing," he says but he means, "I don't know."  
-  
He doesn't know if it's a recent development or something he's always done but Boyd doesn't like to sleep. He tries to stay up all night, drinks black coffee, chain smokes on the porch, and flips through the books Ava brings him. He's never asked her why she brings him his stuff, why she doesn't take him to get them himself. He's afraid to ask.  
Almost as afraid as he is of dreaming.  
-  
"Am I a bad man?" He asks four beers in and instilled with a bravado he doesn't know whether it's false or not.  
Ava sighs and lays her head on his shoulder, tipsy enough that physical barriers disappear.  
"No, honey. No. You're a wonderful man. You've just... Done things that people don't like."  
Boyd buries his hand in her golden hair, has to wonder again if this is normal to her, if he's ever done this before. Her legs slide sideways until she's curled against his side on the porch.  
They watch the stars and listen to the night.  
-  
"Crowder! Hey, uh, it's Tim. You know me," a blond man says, standing on Ava's porch. Boyd hooks his thumb into his belt loop and nods.  
"Nice to meet you, Tim."  
"I know Raylan ain't here. Just need directions to the Jessop house."  
Boyd blinks at him. Tim grimaces out a smile.  
"Is Miss Crowder in?"  
Boyd turns his head, calls Ava's name. She walks to the front of the house, a frown of curiosity on her face that melts when she sees the blond.  
"He ain't here," she says, folding her arms. Tim nods.  
"Just need directions to the Jessop house."  
She nods. Boyd wanders off into the fields, book under his arm.  
-  
He dreams of angry eyes and soft hair. Of calloused hands that slide over his ribs, trailing down and down and down. A soot covered face, a pair of long thin feet that are soft and kick at him when he grazes the tops. A voice that groans and sighs his name when he digs his fingers into the arch.  
He dreams of a back, tensely square, walking away from him.  
He chants a name like a prayer always followed by, "I know you, I know you, I know--"  
Of something burning against his neck, a mouth sliding over his collar bone, white teeth cutting through the air and a laugh that feels like home and sounds like guns.

Boyd wakes up in an ocean of sweat, panting, tastes something like gun powder and vanilla ice cream in his mouth.  
He hates dreaming.  
-  
Boyd knows how to drive he finds out one day while waiting for Ava to come home from work. He finds keys in the table by the front door. He grabs them automatically, twirling them by the ring and walks out to where a truck sits that Ava doesn't drive. He climbs in to the driver's side and sits for a moment. Then it comes to him.  
He puts the key in the ignition, turns it, and drives away. He ends up at an old abandoned church. He doesn't go in; just sits in the truck and rifles through the glove box. In it he finds a picture, stuck between pages of a book by the same author as the one he read a few days ago.  
Boyd is in it. Him and some other man. They're wearing jeans and tank tops. Boyd has on a flannel shirt that hangs loose on his shoulders and is too long for him. He doesn't think the shirt is his. Boyd stands loosely but upright. He looks comfortable in his skin and confident with a smile just wide enough to make it seem like he's taunting him with a knowledge of a life that he no longer has.  
The other man is standing next to him, looking off to the side, at Boyd, hands only visible enough for him to tell they're both wearing thick work gloves to match the dirt and mud on their clothes. (His thumbs are hooked into his back pockets his mind provides.) The man is slouched but somehow still has his shoulders square, clavicle stretching his skin tight.  
There's a small smile on his face, a humor that makes something pang in Boyd's chest under the scar.  
He strokes his thumb over the length of the man as if he can rub away the dirt.  
-  
"What do I do for a living?" He asks Ava while they sit on the couch. She's at the other end, a barrier of yarn and needles between them, while she twists her hands. She doesn't pause, doesn't look at him, just continues on, talking over the soft click of needles as she turns string into knots and knots into scarf.  
"You're a business owner, Boyd. Got a bar in Harlan and a Dairy Queen in Bennett."  
He looks down at the book in his hands. He can't keep them, not like this. He can't run a business when he doesn't even know his birthday.  
"Is someone looking after them for me?"  
"Course there is. I'm looking after the Dairy Queen."  
"And the bar?"  
Ava doesn't answer right away, her lips compressing like they do whenever she doesn't want to answer.  
"Don't worry about it, Boyd. You've got people looking out for you."  
"Who aside from you would I trust to look after my business?" He asks, a stab of something fierce, something like shame and distrust running through him.  
"A good friend, an old friend. Someone who knows you well."  
"Why haven't I met him?"  
The clicking stops. Boyd doesn't know why he said he instead of some term more neutral. After all, he doesn't know who his friends are. How can he when he doesn't even know himself?  
"He's got something he had to look after down in Miami."  
He drops the question. It's obvious Ava doesn't want to answer.  
-  
Boyd Crowder slept for a year. He went to sleep, knowing who he was, and woke up not knowing what year it was or where he lived. He can list all of the presidents right up to Obama, can say when asked what color the sky is, can do math problems easily when presented with them but couldn't say what his name is, what age he is, or where he was born.  
"My name is Boyd Crowder and I live in Harlan, Kentucky."  
The stranger in the mirror has tattoos; barbed wire on his arm, the initials JC on his chest, and a small cowboy hat that sits on top of a starburst shaped scar that he thinks might be a bullet wound.  
The stranger reveals no secrets and, in fact, has no revelations for him whatsoever. Boyd picks up his toothbrush.  
-  
"Where do I live?"  
"In Harlan, Boyd."  
Boyd resists the urge to shout by taking another sip of his beer. That's what Ava says but he wants to see his house, Boyd's home; he wants to see how the man he was lived. He doesn't tell Ava this, afraid the answer might be that he has no home.  
No place to call his own.  
-  
Ava is making Boyd peel potatoes. She's frying chicken for dinner. Something about it makes him feel like he's missing something- more so than he usually feels.  
"Can we go out, get some ice cream after dinner?" He asks, pressing the slightly rusty peeler to the rough skin of a potato.  
"That sounds lovely, Boyd. My treat, alright?" She says as if everything in Boyd's life isn't already provided by her.  
-  
"Hi mister Crowder!" The sweet looking kid behind the counter shouts. "I'll get your usual," she says, turning around to talk to the kid manning the ice cream station. She stops.  
"Is Mister Givens meetin' you up?"  
Boyd frowns and opens his mouth.  
"Just us today, Stacy," Ava says and smiles. The girl nods and calls back, "Mister Crowder and Miss Ava's here!"  
-  
"What's my home like?" Boyd asks with ice cream on his lips and a cone in his hand. Ava bites into her chocolate dipped cone and eyes the line of trees beyond the parking lot. Boyd ignores the way the ice cream makes him feel like he's missing something, something more than usual.  
"I'll show you, Boyd," Ava says, a determined look on her face.  
-  
It's a two story clapboard not far from Ava's. White paint and a big yard, one side of which is taken up by a garden where tomatoes and berries and some things Boyd doesn't recognize are growing. Ava walks straight to the porch, bee-lining once to touch the tops of her fingers to some grave stones. Boyd stops in front of one. The name on it is "Raylan Givens." Boyd feels a shiver of grief at that but at least now he knows why Ava won't talk about his other friend. It must have been recent, there's no date of death on it like there are the other two. They all have the same last name and, judging by the dates, the other two are his parents.  
It must be nice, Boyd thinks, to be so close to one's family, to be buried in the home one is born into. Boyd doesn't know. All he knows is that all of his kin are dead. Ava told him that weeks ago. Said it with a soft look of apology on her face like she's the one who killed them.  
He girds himself on the porch, staring at the two chairs and table to the right of the door. There's an ashtray and two pairs of heavy work gloves on the table, the empty fingers are tangled together like phantoms holding hands.  
He's afraid to go in, afraid to find out if he lost his memory to grief. Did he lose his... Friend? Did he lose the man he lived with? What did Raylan mean to him?  
(A quiet part of his mind hisses, "Everything, everything. You lost everything.")  
The living room is dusty but it seems more from a recent disuse than true abandonment. There's a sagging couch that looks comfortable, a big TV, shelves with books and DVDs mixed in together. He steps close to one, raises his hand, and strokes his finger down the spine of Pale Rider.  
"I like Westerns?"  
Ava shifts behind him.  
"You don't hate 'em."  
They must be Raylan's.  
-  
Boyd looks at the photo every night and every night he dreams.  
He dreams about digging a garden, washing dishes, fixing a truck. He dreams he talks through it all, comforted by a silent presence at his side. He dreams of long fingers that smell crisp and dark like gun oil and licking ice cream off a chin, his tongue scraping over stubble.  
He dreams and wakes up yearning to know the secrets of the Boyd in the photograph, why he smiles like that.  
-  
Ava is making fried chicken again tonight but this time it's because they have a guest coming. She's real excited about it, says that it's Boyd's Good Friend. He wonders what she means by that, if it's the man who has been helping her look after his businesses. Boyd is setting the table for three when there's a knock on the door followed by the squeak of hinges as someone opens the screen.  
Ava strides through the hallway past the dining room to answer the knock.  
"Raylan," she says voice warm. Boyd's head snaps up from the table and he nearly drops the plate in his hand.  
A tall man bends down to press a kiss to Ava's cheek, cowboy hat obscuring his face but he doesn't need to see to know what that face looks like. It's the one from the picture, it's Raylan. His hands shake, blood draining from his face. Somehow he's in the entry way without ever deciding to go there. The man- Raylan -straightens up and looks at him.  
"Hi," he says, "Ava says I know you."  
Raylan looks like he's tasted something sour and nods.  
"Yeah," he says. "You know me, Boyd."  
He almost believes that's his name when Raylan says it, his stomach dropping. Something else in that vicinity flips when Raylan rakes his eyes from head to toe, says, "You look good," in a quiet voice.  
-  
They sit down at the table, Ava at the head, Boyd to her right, and Raylan on her left. Boyd spoons mashed potatoes on to his plate and ignores the urge to reach across the table. Raylan smiles and goes straight to the fried chicken. Ava chatters while serving herself cream style corn.  
Boyd wants to know what Raylan's skin feels like, can't help the heat that builds in his stomach at the thought that he might have before.  
He bites into a piece of fried chicken and can't keep the image of the bedroom he saw in his house out of his mind. Two nightstands. One had a stack of books and the other a few odds and ends like an oil rag, a watch, a phone charger that didn't fit Boyd's phone.  
"How's that sweet little angel of yours?" Ava asks, sipping on her glass of milk.  
Raylan smiles, pulls out his phone. Boyd freezes.  
"She's half a head taller. Make a great baseball player one day. Gonna get her a mitt and bat next I'm down there," Raylan says, brandishing his phone. On the screen there's a picture of a little girl, just about school age, with dark hair, wide eyes, and a smile as pure as falling snow.  
His heart stops, overwhelmed with a sense of loss. Maybe he was wrong.  
Maybe Boyd had no one to call his own.  
-  
"My name is Boyd Crowder. I live in Harlan, Kentucky."  
The stranger in the mirror tells him absolutely nothing.  
"You do that every morning?"  
He jumps. Raylan is standing in the doorway, shoulder on the jamb, thumb tucked into his front pocket. He's shirtless. There's a smattering of scars across his torso, some white, some pink with newness. Boyd swallows.  
"Yeah," he says and curls his fingers against the cool dip of the sink's edge.  
Raylan says nothing for a few moments, long enough to make him feel uncomfortable.  
"Made eggs. There's coffee in the pot," Raylan tells him and turns away so sharply that he's gone from sight like magic.  
-  
Half the clothes are missing from his closet, a few odds and ends that he remembers from the last time he was here are gone. Raylan sleeps in a room down the hall from Boyd's and he's gone from seven to seven almost every day.  
Some nights he doesn't make it in until later, some times Boyd pretends he's gone to bed by the time Raylan gets home, seeing his town car far enough down the drive to be able to make it into his room before Raylan can see.  
He doesn't like the way things feel wrong around Raylan. He feels unwelcome in what he's told is his home. Raylan speaks in clipped sentences, drinks a glass of whiskey after his dinner, and frowns when Boyd steps out on the porch to smoke.  
-  
"How long have we known each other?"  
"Since we were young."  
-  
"How did we meet?"  
"We dug coal together when we were nineteen."  
-  
"Have we lived here for a while?"  
"You could say."  
-  
Raylan isn't Ava. He doesn't make breakfast every morning or sit on the porch with him and share a cigaret while they look at the stars.  
From the looks of it, Raylan can't stand Boyd, hates to be in his presence.  
He wonders why they live together, why Raylan's clothes were in his closet, why Boyd is wearing one of his shirts in the photo he keeps in his nightstand.  
-  
He dreams of a young man's hand in his, of dragging a scared thing out of the crumbling dark, of a truck's dusty taillights passing over the Harlan county line and never coming back. He dreams of sitting at Ava's table and egging the man across from him into shooting him in the chest. He dreams of the feel of metal cuffs on his wrist, of proselytizing to a prison laundry room full of people that would twist sharpened metal into his guts given the chance.  
He dreams of his daddy dying in his arms. He dreams of holding Raylan in his blood stained hands. He dreams of men hanging from trees like bloated fruit, flies crawling over their disbelieving eyes.

He wakes up screaming.

The door bursts open before he runs out of breath.  
"Boyd," a voice says. "You're OK, are you OK?"  
There's hands on his arms. They're strong and sure, grounding him in the now. He presses into a shoulder, face wet. He trembles.  
Fingers run through his hair, press his face into the warm skin and solid meat in front of him.  
"It's alright, darlin'," the voice croons. "It was just a dream."  
He shakes, feels ashamed. What if it wasn't?  
What if that's what he's been trying to get back?  
-  
He stops sleeping after that. Drinks pot after pot of coffee and tries to find things for him to do. He can't stand to sleep, to know he slept for so long and has to do it at all again. He can't take the dreams.  
Sometimes they're good. Sometimes he dreams he wakes up in the middle of the night to a warmth in his bed, a solid line of back pressed against his front. He dreams about smiling faces he knows, running to meet his daddy, of a man who sits beside him on the couch, a hand on his thigh. He dreams about resting against a strong chest and reading passages aloud from books.  
Other times though... Other times he dreams of a familiar face twisted in disappointment, faces of people he knows he loves bloated and green. He dreams his hands are covered in blood, a dark ink staining them black that he can't wash away and whispering, "Don't die, baby. Come on. Stay with me. You can't go. You promised, asshole. You promised."  
The good dreams are worse than the bad ones. With them he wakes up and feels the expanse of uninhabited bed, the coldness of sheets, and his own emptiness acutely.  
He'll whisper to himself, "My name is Boyd Crowder. My name is Boyd Crowder. MynameisBoydCrowder."  
It doesn't help, just runs in to one meaningless jumble.  
-  
Boyd likes to be up in the morning when Raylan is getting ready for work. He likes how Raylan seems to forget himself and whatever he has against Boyd when he's just leaving sleep.  
He'll stand closer than normal, touch his hip if he has to reach around him, shuffles with bleary eyes past Boyd to reach the coffee. It makes Boyd feel normal. He likes to pretend that mornings like that are what they had before the long sleep, before Boyd forgot who he was.  
-  
He touches Raylan on the shoulder more as an experiment than anything. Raylan starts to press into the touch, stills, then slowly pulls away.  
Boyd doesn't know what that means so he does it more. Grazes Raylan's arm when he reaches for something, taps his back to get his attention, "accidentally" brushes his naked foot against Raylan's when they eat at the table.  
Raylan says nothing, only ever gets incredibly still when he does it.  
-  
Raylan drinks more at night as time goes on. A beer with dinner, a whiskey for desert, a nightcap of moonshine before he goes to bed.  
Boyd thinks it's because of the touching but he can't stop. Every time he does it he just wants to do it again, wants to do it longer. He starts coming up with excuses to touch Raylan. He needs to.  
He craves it.  
-  
He dreams there's a weight setting on top of him, something warm and soft, a hand ghosts over his hair, and lips lightly touch his forehead. He smiles, burrows under his new blanket.  
"I miss you," a voice says, quietly, brokenly.  
-  
He wakes up alone on the couch, a blanket he didn't have when he fell asleep on him, his book on the coffee table, the photo he's been using as a bookmark snugly tucked inside on the page he'd last read.  
He doesn't think he dreamt it but he doesn't know for sure.  
-  
Raylan comes home with busted knuckles and a cut across his cheek. He's got bruises all over his torso but Boyd only knows that because of the way he moves.  
"Sit," he says and points to a chair at the kitchen table. Raylan sways on the spot, eyes narrowing over his freshly poured glass of whiskey.  
"Sit, Raylan." Boyd says, still firmly but softer. He can't stand Raylan looking like that. With blood on his face.  
It makes him queasy.  
"Please?" He tries, dropping his hand to his side.  
Raylan winces around his mouthful of whiskey and sits. Boyd smiles in thanks and wets a kitchen towel.  
He stands in front of Raylan, listening to his too even breathes and the silence of the house and gently dabs at Raylan's face, slowly uncovering it from under the blood.  
When he steps back to run the towel under the sink again he hears Raylan let out a long, unsteady breath.  
When he turns around, Raylan is there, close enough to touch, to feel, staring at him.  
He opens his mouth, to say what, he doesn't know.  
And he never will.  
Because Raylan lifts his arms, ducks his head, Boyd thinks he's going to kiss him. His breath stops, his body leans forward, but it doesn't happen.  
Raylan wraps his arms around Boyd and buries his hurt face against his neck. Boyd drops the kitchen towel, a small hurt noise leaves his mouth.  
Gently, gently, as if he's handling the most fragile, fleeting, creature in existence, Boyd wraps his fingers around the back of Raylan's neck.  
Something pings inside of him so right and so lovely that it hurts.  
They do nothing else, just stand there like that.  
He has never felt more like himself.  
\--


	2. But Not Forgotten

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> After that, it's as if the night never happened. Like so much of Boyd's life, the event exists in a haze of did and did-not. Raylan no longer reaches for Boyd and if he had thought Raylan quiet before, the man gives new meaning to the definition now.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> After much deliberation, I've decided to continue this. I hope I don't disappoint. There will maybe be a third part some time.

"My name is Boyd Crowder. I live in Harlan, Kentucky."

The stranger before him taunts Boyd with his knowledge of self. Somewhere under his massive forehead and hair full of secrets, is everything that he used to know. 

The doctors say it might come back, it might not. They say he should see a shrink but he has to wonder the usefulness of a psychiatrist when he doesn't have any memories from before. From before his long sleep. 

-

"This was your first business," Raylan says, hands shoved into his pockets as he walks across the bar. The woman behind the counter smiles at Raylan like he's a bowl of fudge that she wants to lick clean. Boyd feels a thrill of unnecessary possessiveness run through him.

It's a wonderful feeling. In a way. Stirs his blood. 

-

He finds an iPad in one of the drawers in his office desk behind the bar. It doesn't power on right away so he spends a few seconds finding the charge cord and plugging it in. 

The first thing he does when he gets it to turn on is open up the picture app. 

Dozens on dozens of photos. Ava in some, Raylan in others, and a mess of people he doesn't know. He's about halfway through them when he finds one of two male hands clasped together, wedding bands on their fingers. 

He stops breathing, thumb automatically pressing into his ring finger. He tries to remember if he's ever seen Raylan wear a ring but can't. 

It takes him a few moments to remember that Raylan is still in the room with him. He turns his head and Raylan is staring at him, a steady unreadable expression on his face. 

He almost asks. 

-

"Am I-- was I ever married?" He asks Ava over the phone. It's quiet for longer than he would like. He shifts on his bed, staring at the picture he found in his glove box. 

"It's not my place to say, honey," she says in a voice he can tell holds a little anger.

"Whose is it?" 

"Ask someone else, Boyd. I can't– I just can't." 

Boyd doesn't tell her that he's afraid to. 

He thinks she might know anyway. 

-

Raylan falls asleep while they're watching TV. He slides sideways until he's resting against Boyd.

He sighs in his sleep when Boyd wraps his arm around his shoulder, burrowing closer. Boyd's heart hammers in his chest. He turns his head, and inhales softly. 

Raylan smells like gun oil and sweat, dirt and something sweet like ice cream. 

-

"My name is Boyd Crowder and I live in Harlan, Kentucky," he says but it doesn't seem real. Or not nearly as real as when Raylan says his name. 

He says it likes it's a truth, a terribly unavoidable and unchangeable fact. 

He loves the way Raylan says his name. 

-

Boyd gets home from an evening at Ava's to a drunk Raylan glaring at something in his hand like it insulted his hat (he knows what that looks like because he did it last week). 

"I thought you were gone on a stakeout all night," he says and watches Raylan quickly shove what's in his hand into his pocket. It jingles. 

"Didn't take so long as Art thought." 

Raylan stands on jerky legs from the couch, walking in a wobbly line. He almost falls but Boyd is there, wrapping his fingers around Raylan's forearms. 

"Come on, let's get your drunk ass to bed."

Boyd slings an arm around Raylan's waist, starts walking towards the stairs. Raylan's feet drag then dig in to the floor. 

"Boyd," he says. "Boyd."

 Something there in his words makes Boyd pause, turn his head, and look at Raylan. 

There's an explosion of movement. Hands on him pushing and pushing until his back hits the wall. He's panting, staring at Raylan with wide eyes. Raylan is breathing heavy, eyes bugged out, hands sliding down Boyd's chest, and then- and then--

He shoves himself away from Boyd, stumbling. 

"I can get my own damn self to bed," Raylan hisses. 

Like magic, he's gone. 

Boyd slides down the wall, breathing rapid, and sits hard on the ground. His whole body is thrumming. 

-

That night, Boyd falls asleep in his own bed and dreams of Raylan's face pressed into his neck, a long arm buckled across his waist, and legs as long as the day tangled with his. 

He dreams of a weight in his lap, of fingers slicked with blood and far too many holes to plug. 

"Don't die, baby. Come on. Stay with me. You can't go. You promised, asshole. You promised," his dream-self chants, hysterical. 

He wakes to an empty bed, an empty room, an empty house. 

Raylan comes home late, skirts the edges of the room like any distance is too close. Boyd's tummy swoops at the cagey look on Raylan's face. It feels like the settling of disappointment, something bitter and rushing. 

-

Ava is the one he asks to take him to the shrink. He purposefully picks a man in Lexington, someone who couldn't possibly have known him. 

He hates the whole appointment from start to finish, is possibly more uncooperative simply because he volunteered for this, to have his empty head poked and prodded with blind fingers. 

He supposes, in a way, it's no different than what he's been doing and he wants- needs -to remember the man he was, to sort out and recall everything lost to him. It's not all about Raylan, he tells himself. It can't be. The Boyd that was must have had more than a taciturn friend who, more often than not, looks angry at Boyd's existence. 

-

"It'll take time," Ava says with a tired smile. 

They're sitting in a dive bar, one beer between the two of them. Boyd smiles at her, aiming for thankful and charming. 

"That's the only thing I've got right now." 

She huffs, lays her head against his shoulder. 

"You got me. An' you've got Raylan, too. You're not alone, Boyd." 

Boyd takes a long pull on their beer, eyes the barkeep as she runs her rag over the same spot for the fifteenth time. She's trying not to look like she's watching them but he can tell anyway. 

"Raylan works near here?" He asks. He'd tried not to. He had tried not to bring up the man but Ava had said his name first and now Boyd can't not. 

"He does. He's... Near here." 

Boyd almost asks to see him. Almost. He wants to know what Raylan is like when he's not in Harlan. He wants to know the things about Raylan that he must have known before. 

Instead he passes their beer to Ava and buries his fingers in her golden hair. 

For reasons he can't know entirely, he's very much grateful for Ava's care of him. He doesn't know what he did to deserve her in his life but he wishes he did. He wishes he knew why she loves him so. He wishes he knew why he loves her like he does. 

-

"My name is Boyd Crowder and I live in Harlan, Kentucky," the man in the mirror says. It means very little to him, removed from his sense of self. He might as well be saying it's raining in Seattle. Both facts have the same level of impact on him. 

Boyd leans closer, focussed on the lines around his eyes. 

"Why do I dream of you?" He asks, so close to the glass that the mirror fogs in front of his mouth. "Why do I ache when you're around?" 

Floorboards creak outside the bathroom door. Boyd turns on the water and picks up a toothbrush. Footsteps head away. He brushes his teeth as if the Colgate might uncover some obscured fact of who he was. 

-

Raylan doesn't come home for several days. Boyd begins to think that he forgot Raylan telling him something. Because he doesn't remember Raylan telling him he wouldn't be home for a while, doesn't remember if this absence was planned. 

-

Boyd last saw Raylan Tuesday night. It's now Saturday morning and Ava is making him pecan pancakes again. He slept in her spare room last night. He couldn't stand the blankness of his own home, couldn't take the solitude. 

He drags his fork through maple syrup and wonders if he has always been someone who prefers company to solitude. 

When he asks, Ava's face flashes with something like pain before she smiles. 

"You've always been a people person, Boyd. I've never known you any other way." 

So, he assumes, he has always been this pathetic. 

-

Ava kisses him softly when he leaves. The press of her lips against his cheek feels strangely familiar. 

He smiles at her, touches her hair lightly, and leaves. 

-

Saturday night he resists the urge to call Ava. He sits on his porch and drinks, watching insects dance around the porch light. He's there until sunrise. An empty pack of smokes and the feeling of ash on his tongue. 

He is still alone. 

-

Sunday brings dry-heaving and a toast-only diet. 

He's sitting next to the downstairs toilet, head resting against cool porcelain when he hears the door. 

Lifting his head is only possible due to short lived hope. 

"Boyd!"

Boyd flushes the toilet, stands to rinse his mouth out. 

When he greets Ava in the kitchen she frowns, wraps her arms around him with a, "Oh, honey." 

She sits him down at the kitchen table with a glass of water and two aspirin. 

"You didn't have to come," he says in a quiet voice. 

She purses her lips and pulls out a cigaret. 

"Course I did, Boyd." 

He shakes his head. 

"Raylan don't like it when I smoke inside," he says instead. 

Ava takes a drag of her cigaret, brow heavy. 

"Screw him," she hisses, mouth leaking smoke. 

Boyd smiles, sips at his water. He wants to. 

-

He goes to bed that night with Ava's arms around him, her hair tickling his nose. 

- 

He dreams of kissing her in front of her house, desperate and so very full of longing. He dreams of her bitter smile, thin fingers caressing his face. 

"Looks like we both fell for the same asshole," one of them says. 

They both laugh. 

-

He wakes up alone. 

When he leaves his room, he can hear a clatter in the kitchen. Boyd assumes it's Ava and makes his way into the bathroom. 

Wash face, "MynameisBoydCrowderIliveinHarlanKentucky," brush teeth, and piss. 

Going down the stairs, he hears the clink of dishes, the sizzle of something in a pan. 

He stops when entering the kitchen. 

Ava is by the stove, minding some eggs and Raylan is sitting at the kitchen table. Both of them are tense, mouths in fine hard lines. 

"Morning, Boyd," Ava says, attempts to smile. 

He nods. 

"Morning, Miss Ava." 

This time her smile is small, still tense, but real. 

"Made you some egg scrambles. There's coffee in the pot." 

He nods. 

"Thank you." 

"It's what you do when you love someone, Boyd. You take care of them." 

Her response is pointed, an edge of anger to it. He doesn't think it's meant for him. 

- 

"The police report says that you were in a shooting." 

Boyd nods. 

"That explains the bullet holes." 

His shrink gives Boyd a flat look. 

"The report reads that you were set upon in your place of business, that you and another man were attacked by a small group of local drug traffickers. You were injured, and the man with you was shot with a scattergun. One of your assailants hit you over the head with the butt of his gun shortly before local authorities arrived at the scene and arrested the individuals involved." 

Boyd leans back in his chair, arms crossed over his belly. 

"I've read the damn thing too. What of it?" 

"Do you know why you were attacked?" 

"The report says that it was retaliation against the deputy Marshall I was with." 

The shrink nods. 

"Retaliation for what?" 

Boyd shakes his head. 

"I don't know." 

He wishes he did. 

-

He gets lost in Lexington, pulls over by the courthouse. While trying to get his phone to give him directions back to Harlan, he curses his decision to turn down Ava's offer to drive him.  Someone knocks on the window of his truck. 

It's a woman, friendly looking and wearing a badge like Raylan's. He rolls down the window. 

"Afternoon, Mister Crowder." 

Boyd nods. 

"Afternoon, miss." After a pause, he adds, "have we met?" 

She grins at him. He smiles apologetically at her. 

"On occasion. What're you doing so far from Harlan." 

"An appointment with a doctor. I'm sorry to say I got lost." 

She laughs softly. 

"You trying to go home or to your appointment?" 

"Home," he says though he's not quite sure if that's accurate. 

She provides him directions to the highway and straight to Raylan's house. 

"Thank you. I'm sorry to say I don't remember your name?" 

"It's Rachel, Mister Crowder. You have a good afternoon." 

With that she's walking towards an idling towncar not too far away. Boyd waits until she's inside of it to drive off. 

He tries not to wonder why Raylan wasn't the one who got out. It was his car after all. 

-

For supper, Boyd consumes a large portion of a handle. The world swoops and whirls around him where he sways. He doesn't know why he drinks. He doesn't have anything more he could possibly forget. 

-

Raylan becomes more and more like Boyd's memories, non-existent and inscrutable. At most, he's at the house three nights a week. He says little to nothing and does his utmost to avoid any and all contact. 

Boyd wonders what he did to deserve this treatment. 

-

He and Ava are sitting on the porch when Raylan drives up, legs tangled together and passing a cigaret between each other. He wasn't expecting Raylan. He had been here just yesterday and the boy has made a habit of not repeating his visits two days in a row. 

Raylan stops at the stairs leading up to the porch, thumbs hooked in his back pockets. There's a look on his face that Boyd doesn't understand. But then again, that's common. Boyd often wonders if he ever knew Raylan well enough to read him. 

Ava detangles herself from him with a sigh and stands. 

"I better be getting home," she says. 

Boyd reaches for her and she smiles, bends down and kisses his forehead. 

"Goodnight, Boyd." 

"Goodnight, Ava." 

She slips her shoes on and leaves. Raylan's eyes follow her the whole time. Neither of them speak to each other. 

Silence reigns after her car has left the drive. Boyd doesn't know what to say or why he feels like he needs to. 

-

Boyd comes home a few days later to Raylan sitting on the couch, staring into his glass. His hand is clutched like he's holding something in it. Something he can't bare to drop. 

"Good evening, Raylan. You're home early." 

Raylan simply nods. His face is blank. Or something near it. 

Boyd leaves him there, afraid of what he could discover, afraid that he'd learn nothing. 

-

The empty house is more than he can bare. It echoes strangely when he makes a noise as if it's trying to whisper the secrets of what happened inside of it to him but he doesn't speak the language. It's mocking him, he's sure of it. 

- 

It's a Thursday night and Boyd knows that Raylan will not be home. He hasn't been home since Tuesday. Boyd doesn't know where he goes, if he has a second place in Lexington. If... He's got someone he stays with there. Then again, Boyd knows very little. 

Aside from the fact that Raylan will not be home. 

With the security of this fact in mind, Boyd opens the door to the bedroom Raylan has been sleeping in( he can't call it Raylan's room, he can't ) and slips inside. 

It's not so much neat as... Empty. The bed is unmade, clothes are piled in a basket by the door, awaiting laundry day, and the closet is open to reveal a row of dress shirts and slacks all hanging slightly crooked. 

Boyd takes a moment to trail fingers over sleeves and along slacks. They feel familiar. 

But they are not what he is here for. 

The nightstand has atop it an oil rag, a bottle of gun oil, a copy of Guns N Ammo, a half full glass of water, and the phone charger that used to be in Boyd's room. 

The drawer opens with only a small screech. The first thing his eyes land on is a half used tube of lubricant. 

Boyd does not smile or frown at this. He can only guess at why Raylan has it. 

Underneath it, though... Underneath the tube, is a small card, more square than rectangle. He picks it up. 

On the cover is a drawing of a horse head. The caption reads, "Are you gonna cowboy up or lay there and bleed?" 

The inside is disappointingly empty save for one line scrawled near the bottom. 

"Stop picking fights, asshole. -B" 

It's in Boyd's handwriting, that much he can tell. 

Boyd places it back where he found it, closes the drawer. 

Next he tries the small desk in the room. Mostly it's covered with case files, half-filled out papers for the Marshall service. But in the bottom drawer, tucked under a stack of utility bills, he finds it. 

A thick Manila envelope with CROWDER, BOYD written on it. 

Standing, Boyd opens it. He doesn't even finish the first page before he's sitting down in the small chair stationed at the desk. 

It takes him two hours to read through it. Another two for it to sink in that this is all about him. 

He's up until sunrise, studying his sins.  

Just as he feared, knowing is no comfort at all. 

 

 


	3. Recollection

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Boyd crowder didn't go to sleep. He greeted the sunrise with full knowledge of who he was.

His name is Boyd Crowder. He lives in Harlan, Kentucky. He owns a bar, a Dairy Queen, and is suspected in several federal level crimes such as smuggling, dealing, racketeering, bombing, and robbing. He is a known associate of a para-military neo-nazi organization. His baby sitter is a deputy U.S. Marshall. In case he remembers himself, the Marshall will be there to haul him away.   
It is nothing more than that, just shadow games, sleight of hand. Nothing more.   
-  
"You OK, Boyd?" Ava asks one night as they sit on Raylan's porch, each a cigaret and beer in hand.   
He nods, shrugs.   
"At the moment or in general?"   
She frowns, tucks her feet under herself, and lays her head on his shoulder.   
"You can do this, Boyd. You've survived much worse."   
Because he knows she's right, he answers, "Yeah."   
-  
Raylan sits at the couch, gun parts spread out on newspaper atop the coffee table.   
He's got this tiny little frown on his face that makes his brows crinkle in the center while he works. He does not look at Boyd. He does not talk.   
Boyd feels like such a fool. To have thought– to have thought what he did.   
It could never be that.   
-  
Boyd is sitting aways away from the house, a dog-eared book in his lap, a glass of sweet tea at his side, when an SUV pulls up.   
Out exits a man. Tall, blond, walks like his shoulders are both lighter and heavier than they are. Boyd has met him. Once.   
Tom? Terry?   
The man hollers at the house as he strides with purpose towards the porch.   
"Yer pretty enough, Raylan! Time to go!"   
The man makes it to the bottom step before Raylan is there, opening the screen door and stepping out. He looks good, Boyd can't help but think. That plaid shirt with the red tie, jeans, hat.   
Boyd can make out the shape of his small smile from here. He says something. The blond laughs.   
They walk together to the SUV.   
Gone from sight in a cloud of dust.   
-  
Boyd returns to that dive bar Ava took him to last they were both in Lexington after his appointment.   
The barkeep waves like he knows him.   
"You know he don't live here no more, right?" The man says, sliding a glass of whiskey and a basket of mozzarella sticks onto the table in front of Boyd. He didn't ask for them.   
Boyd smiles, picks up the whiskey.   
"Son, I don't even know where I live no more."   
The man laughs like it's a joke. Boyd wishes it were.   
-  
There are dishes sitting in the sink, waiting to be washed. Boyd refuses to do them. If he is, as he suspects, merely a guest in this house, then the upkeep of it does not fall to him.   
-  
He's trying to decide between Raisin Bran or Honey Bunches of Oats. He cannot recall having tried either of them recently, does not know which one he'll like. When a thin hand slides over the box of Raisin Bran he has, takes it out of his grip, and deposits it back on the shelf.   
"You don't like Raisin Bran, Boyd."   
The voice belongs to a beautiful woman, dark hair, charming smile.   
"Do I know you?"   
She huffs, again, charming.   
"Yeah, you do. My name's Winona. You... live with my ex-husband," she says.   
There's a little blond girl clinging to her leg, wide eyes fixed on Boyd. She smiles, pure as fallen snow.   
-  
Her name is Willa and she glares at Boyd with this tiny, affronted look when he says he doesn't remember her name. Over coffees and chocolate milk at a nearby diner, Willa only forgives him when he compares losing his memory to misplacing a toy. She makes him promise to check under the couch for them seeing as that's where her toys usually end up.   
-  
It's now seven o'clock and Willa is sprawled on the living room floor, an assortment of brightly colored toys scattered around her, humming to herself.   
Winona is sat with Boyd at the kitchen table, a cup of coffee each on the table before them. Her legs are crossed at the knees and she smiles nervously, her chin up as if she's proud to be unsure. Boyd wishes he had that sort of gumption.   
"I'm glad to see you home, Boyd," she says, something bitter making her eyes shine. "I know he was all sorts of torn up while you were in the hospital. Didn't say it like that but... Well, you know Raylan."   
There's laughter in her face, a joke she may think she's sharing with him, but he doesn't know it.   
He still smiles at her. It may be as salty as the look she's trying to hide but at least he's being honest.   
"How can I?" He says. "I don't even know myself."   
She bites her lip, eyes darting over to her beautiful daughter. Winona leans in.   
"He's told you, hasn't he? He couldn't have just not."   
Boyd opens his mouth to tell her he's no idea what she means but the front door opens.   
"Daddy!" Willa yelps, jumping to her feet and racing to the door.   
Raylan scoops her up as she giggles, flailing grace-filled child arms in the air.   
"Hey baby girl," Raylan whispers, eyes shining with nothing but love.   
In that instant, Boyd hates that child more than he can say for what she is given so freely and for what he has no right to.   
-  
It turns into a situation come bed time. Winona and Willa are staying the weekend. With Willa dozed off in her daddy's arms, it becomes apparent they'll need a place to sleep and, well, there are only two rooms in the house.   
"I can take the couch," Raylan says, voice soft and warm like fleece with his eyes fixed on his baby girl.  
Winona's eyes cut between Boyd and Raylan. There's something shrewd about her look that settles unevenly with Boyd.   
"Nonsense. We both know that couch ain't anything good to sleep on. Your back can't take it. Me and Willa can take your bed and you can bunk up with Boyd." She smiles sharply. “It’s not like you two aren’t familiar with sharing space.”   
Rylan takes a deep breath, hand now cupping the back of Willa’s head.   
“I don’t think Boyd—“  
“Minds at all, right Boyd?”  
Boyd freezes, paralyzed by fear of any answer at all.

Boyd Crowder goes to bed alone.   
He dreams of vanilla soft serve with lead sprinkles, of a frown that's actually a smile, a voice that says his name like its damnation and salvation in one hard clipped syllable. He dreams of the shadow of a hat obscuring a face he knows, chanting, "you know me. You know me. Youknowme. You know–"   
And hands that grasp his heart tight, lift him from some strange perdition only to place him inside a purgatory of their own making.   
"Why won't you say you know me?" He asks.   
There's a sigh like the memory of a familiar breeze but no answer.

He wakes up to arms around him. Warm. Recognizable. He dares not move as a voice whispers softly, broken, "I miss you so much."   
His hair moves as lips take action against it.   
"Can't stand the way you look at me. 's like you don't know me. You know me, Boyd Crowder. You've always– better than anyone. Better than that."   
He forces himself to breath, even-like, so that he doesn't hold it to hear that desperate voice better.   
"We been through so much. Too much. I can't. I can't– I want to. So bad. Why won't you come back to me, asshole? I'm right here and you're not. You promised."   
Arms squeeze him just a little bit more then pull away with a sigh that drifts, humid and gentle, through his hair. He's left alone.

Sunlight peaks into the room, slowly bleaching Boyd's unblinking eyes. His skin is hot all over, itchy. A voice rings in his ears.   
He doesn't know what to believe.

Boyd Crowder sits in a pick up truck that's registered in his name. Late morning sunlight bleeds through the windshield and catches on cigarette smoke that drifts like the fog in his mind realized.   
He doesn't have to be here, he knows, but– part of him feels like he needs to.   
When the digital clock on the radio switches onto the next hour, he climbs out, throwing the cigarette away.   
The courtroom is quiet when he enters. A man he knows but doesn't is sitting in the witness stand. Boyd takes an empty seat in the back.   
"Can you tell the court what brought you to the establishment of one Boyd Crowder, Deputy Marshal?"   
The man nods, eyes fixed on the lawyer in front of him.   
"I can."   
"Please do."   
"What does the reason me being there have to do with the rest of it?" Raylan asks, small tight frown on his face.   
"It establishes certain facts. Please answer the question, Deputy Marshal."   
Raylan leans back in the seat, shoulders spread wide as he slouches.   
"I was there to visit Boyd Crowder. There had been some rumblings from a few CIs that the criminal element in Harlan had not taken kindly to Mister Crowder's cooperation with the marshal service."   
"So this was a work visit?"   
Raylan smiles and shrugs and Boyd's heart beats as irregularly as his breathes.   
"It was not an official visit if that's what you're askin'."   
The lawyer smoothly side-steps this comment but Boyd wishes he wouldn't.   
"So this informant or informants passed information that some of the, as you put it, criminal elements in Harlan County did not approve of Mister Crowder's interaction with the Marshal service. Did you believe there was an imminent threat to Mister Crowder's person?"   
"At the time, no. I did not think there was an 'imminent threat'."   
"Then why did you go to his business?"   
Raylan seems to breath in a deep, suffering breath. Boyd clutches at the bench next to his thighs, knuckles white.   
"Because we have a policy against dismissing threats against people of value to the marshal service and its pursuit of justice."   
"And Mister Crowder was a valuable asset to the marshal service? Is that the only reason you decided to go down there?"   
Raylan's jaw clenches hard enough to be seen all the way in his bench at the back.   
"Where are these questions going, Vasquez? I don't rightly get what they have to do with the shooting?"   
"Please answer the question, deputy marshal."   
Raylan looks to his side at the judge as if the man would provide some sense that this... Vasquez was not.   
"Answer the question, boy. We ain't got all day," is all the judge says.   
Raylan sits straight up so suddenly it seems more like some puppeteer jerked his strings than any fluid human motion.   
"No. It wasn't the only reason I went down there."   
"And what was the other reason?"   
Raylan takes in a deep breath, the tendons in his neck jumping. His eyes search the crowd but do not land on Boyd. In fact, he looks everywhere but where Boyd is sitting.   
"Because the marshal service does not take lightly threats against its employee's spouses."   
There's a shocked murmur through the crowd that travels all the way into Boyd's bones. Spouses. He said– he said spouses.   
"Boyd Crowder is the spouse of a person employed with the marshal service?" The lawyer Vazquez asks with what Boyd assumes is fake surprise.   
"Yes."   
The crowd begins to murmur again, still hushed whispers.   
"So. What you're saying is that Boyd Crowder, a known associate of a hate organization, of the so-called Dixie mafia, and who has been believed to be involved with sex trafficking, illegal drug distribution, and racketeering is the spouse of a government employee?"   
  
The crowd erupts into chatter. The judge bangs his gavel. Raylan takes a deep, hard breath, eyes steely and fixed on the lawyer.   
Whatever he says is drowned out by the crescendo of voices and the hammering of the judge.   
Boyd cannot hear any of it above the ringing in his ears.   
None of this makes sense.

"Tell me something, Miss Ava."   
Ava's hair slides across the side of her face as she tilts her head, a long, thin smile stretching her lips.   
"Like what, Boyd?"   
"Was I ever in love?"   
Her smile turns sad as she leans against him, head perching in his chest as the old bench on her front porch creaks.   
"I'm not sure I've known a time when you haven't been," she responds, fingers stretching over his heart, over that bullet shaped scar.   
"Did I ever love you? I have this dream. You were a fairy queen in a past life and I was a humble pilgrim seeking solace in your spider silk throne."   
She huffs a small, unbelieving breath.   
"Once upon a time..." She says but elaborates no more.

He drives past the house in the evening, sees Raylan's car, and keeps on going. He doesn't know where.

He ends up at a cabin in the woods. Some place that seems like he's been here in a dream of a dream. It unsettles him.   
Sitting on the porch with a gas lamp, he studies the dirt below him. Parts of it glitter like old brass and blood.   
There's an old couch inside, half eaten by bugs and time. It doesn't make sense why he feels so comforted to sit on it, why he stands after a few moments to pry up loose boards in the corner.   
A small trove is what it is. He finds moonshine, a gun, hunting knife, and a duffle with clothes and cash money.   
He sits on the dusty floor and wonders if these things laid out in front of him are relics from a life forgotten. The clothes are his size.

Seconds bleed into minutes that bleed into hours in this secluded cabin in the woods. He does not know if it's Tuesday or Thursday but he does know that this little structure houses enough non-perishable foodstuffs to last him weeks more.

Moonshine burns his lips, his teeth, his throat, his stomach. And does the same in reverse when he heaves and retches into the dust covered toilet as he wonders if his life always made so little sense.   
Maybe that's why he forgot it. He couldn't be the criminal and he couldn't be the good guy. A few buckshot and some liters of blood took away his inability to decide, to choose whether or not to be an outlaw or an outcast.

In the end, it's the same either way. Boyd Crowder that was had enemies and lovers and no ability to separate the two. Boyd that is has no enemies or lovers and no ability to distinguish who is who. In both cases, context is lost or misinterpreted.   
In both cases, he's left with a splitting headache and the taste of burnt nothing on his tongue.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> One more part I think. I know it was supposed to be three originally. Which would have suited me just fine but I realize that this would not be a satisfying ending. So one more. For closure.


	4. Rote

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Boyd spends some time alone with the one man who puzzles him the most in a place quiet and restful. It would be nice if only Boyd could escape from the thing that plagues him the most. It follows him, taunting him with the scars of a life he won't allow himself to know.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> this chapter is brought to you by Alberta by the Indigo Girls. Highly recommend this song. I'd certainly recommend listening to it. I know I have been while writing this.

Boyd sits on the porch to a cabin, that cool-damp only found at dawn chilling his hands. He's not sure how long he's been here. It could be five days or fifty. It feels like both; an eternity of silence, woods, and the clink of mason jars crammed into one hundred and twenty hours.   
He wonders, briefly, if this is the opposite of how it felt to wake up and find that he had slept away his life. At the time, he'd been too sluggish, drugged, to recall more than a gunk covered after burn of a memory.   
Boyd takes a drag of his cigaret as he watches the sun rise. It doesn't matter what was or could have been. The end result is the same. As it always will be. He can't know because his mind will not allow it– and what a betrayal that is; his own mind working against him to remove himself from context and familiarity.   
Spouses. Ha. Boyd could laugh if his throat didn't close up at the thought.

He takes to walking the hills after breakfast time, running his hands over rough wood and soft leaf as the quiet slowly crushes him.   
It's peaceful here. A man could forget himself. Or maybe, if luck is on Boyd's side, a world could forget a man.

  
The answer is both, Boyd thinks, staring at the open page of his book as he sits below an oak tree not far from the cabin, and that's what makes it so unbearable. How can one man go from shirking the law and touting hate to sleeping in the same bed as a law man? He doesn't know. That itches like the hidden scar on the back of his head. The puzzle is 1+X= spouses and Boyd hasn't a clue if he's good at math.

The sun is setting, pink and irritated, just beyond the trees. Boyd has drawn a small cowboy hat in the dust of the window to watch it simply because he thought some perspective would help. He's not sure if it does.

  
At dawn on the sixth or sixtieth day, a car pulls into view on the road. It's covered in dust and seems weary; headlights on to battle the persistent fog of morning, suspension whining with every dip in the road. Boyd's heart races, stills, beats sluggishly against his rib cage, throbbing under the scar on his chest.   
It parks.   
A man emerges, lanky and rigid.   
Shoulders stooped, head hunched down, chin straight, Raylan looks more like a dog about to lunge than anything welcoming. Boyd waits at the window, fingers digging nails into the old wood of the sill.   
The front door opens with a creak. A hat. A head. A frown.   
"Boyd."   
The air leaves Boyd's lungs as if he's been waiting since he left to hear that syllable.   
Raylan places his hands on his hips, fingers spread like pale, poisonous spider legs.   
"You 'bout ready to come home?" He asks, eyes slanted, body angled mostly away from Boyd.   
"Where–" Boyd clears his throat. "Where is that, my friend? I– I don't know."   
Raylan breathes in deep, his fingers spasmodic where they press into his hips.   
"It ain't here."   
Boyd curls his arms around himself, decides he doesn't like that, and let's them drop to his sides.   
"Then where? Where can I rest my head? Where am I always welcome? Where do I call home?"   
"With me."   
It's hissed out tight like silk pulled from a fist. Raylan's chest is heaving, his eyes large and bulging.   
"With me," he whispers as his shoulders drop, hands go slack. "Come with me."   
And because Boyd doesn't know any different, cannot recall anyplace better, he goes. He wants to.   
The drive is quiet, Boyd's truck still abandoned at the cabin because Raylan had got this tight look on his face when Boyd went to it.   
"Raylan?"   
Silence. The hum of tires on road.   
"Raylan."   
A sigh, deep and tired.   
"Yes, Boyd?"   
"How'd you know where I was?"   
Fingers creak against a steering wheel as the answer is given vehemently and with a quiet rage.   
"Because I know you."   
At least, Boyd thinks, one of them does.

  
Boyd pauses in his entry to their house, stares at the spot on the wall where Raylan had shoved him so very long ago. He wishes he could have that back; the want without the context. He was not happier but... Something else. Hopeful. He had been hopeful in his ignorance.   
When he looks over to Raylan, the man is pouring himself a whiskey from the small cabinet in the corner. He swallows it all in one go, sets the cup down with a thunk of finality.   
"Years ago, maybe six? Seven? Ava was arrested for murder," Raylan says, turning. He crosses his arms, leans against the cabinet, eyes down.   
Boyd's heart thumps in his chest. His sweet Ava a murderess?   
"I've always had the theory it was some sort of self defense but that's hard to prove when the scene is cleaned and she was found trying to dump the body in a slurry."   
"Raylan, where is this going?"   
Boyd shifts on his feet, uncomfortable and unsure. Raylan simply breathes.   
"Somewhere I'm told I should have taken you a while ago," is all Raylan responds with.   
Boyd's body goes rigid. He doesn't know where this is going but he feels it's not going to be easy to hear.   
"She was engaged when she went in. Something happened, I don't know. You'd never tell, only say that she had a second thought and stopped there. That night you called me. I didn't know at the time that she'd broken it off with you. Thought you were in one of your moods."   
Raylan pauses, reaches behind him for his glass and bottle to pour another drink.   
Boyd is frozen, heart aching. He was engaged to Ava and she left him? They were together? He feels something sharp in his chest like a bullet still lodged there and deciding now to throb with his blood.   
"You asked me how I lived with it– being left by Winona– how I could bear to be rejected by the love of my life."   
Boyd takes shaky steps to the couch and sits down, burying his face in his hands. This is all too much and not enough. It aches in a strangely familiar way.   
"I said she wasn't. I said I'd only ever met one person who knew me completely. I may have been a little drunk."   
There's a smile on Raylan's voice as if this were a fond memory now. Boyd can't look to confirm this.   
"You ended the call shortly after that with some odd comment I'm sure you thought was profound. I can't recall it. At the time I thought it was just another one of your weird moments that would pass without comment but... You, unpredictable as you are, kept calling. All the way through Ava's release. It kept going like that until Ava informed the marshal service that you weren't doing anything but tending bar. You see," Raylan pauses to sip at his drink. "Her release was contingent on her informing us about your criminal activity."   
Boyd shakes his head in his hands, pierced and wounded by this tale.   
"Why're you telling me this, Raylan?"   
He feels lost, left to drift at sea.   
"I'll get there, Boyd, just hold on."   
There's movement but Boyd won't look, can't look. Ava. Sweet, caring Ava, designing against him. He can't believe it. Or maybe he can. He has not yet decided.   
"I went down to see this for myself and there you were, smiling big and serving some asshole a beer. We got to talking and I didn't leave until late. I kept coming back, trying to catch you at your scheming. I knew you'd say something should there be anything going on. You never were so good at making your veiled comments veiled enough."   
There's a pause here, the clink of glass.   
"But it never happened. What did happen was us getting inebriated in your office and... Fooling around."   
Boyd's head shoots up at this. Raylan is standing not so far away, hands in his pockets, glass on the table.   
"A lot of weird shit happened in the inbetween. We fought, got drunk, pretended the fighting didn't happen, then one day we're out on that porch out there," Raylan gestures with his head to the front door. "And you lean in and say, 'Raylan, my friend, I've come to a sudden understanding,' and I ask you about what and you say, 'I didn't lose the love of my life; I believe I found it.'"   
Boyd holds his breath, caught inside a bubble of mixed feelings.   
Raylan lays a hand over the border between neck and shoulder.   
"And then you bit me right here."   
Surprise. Strange delight. Boyd laughs because Raylan is smiling, because it seems oddly right.   
"I bit you?"   
Raylan nods, a small, fond smile on his face.   
"You did."   
Boyd leans back, crossing his legs, and resting his hands in his lap. He decides he likes this position.   
"I'm sure you did not take that so well."   
There's a sparkle in Raylan's eyes. Something Boyd has never seen.   
"You'd be surprised."   
The smile drops from Boyd's face. His teeth ache. It doesn't seem quite so funny when the sparkle in Raylan's eyes morphs into something else, something warm and getting hotter.   
"Would I?"   
Raylan's head jerks as if he's attempting to nod but can't quite get his neck to move right. He moves quickly then, sliding down to kneel in front of Boyd, the hand still in his pocket coming out clenched tight around something.   
Boyd's own fingers curl into tight fists. He holds his breath.   
"Yes," Raylan whispers, unfurling his hand.   
Inside rests two gold rings.   
Boyd's heart stops beating.   
"I liked it a lot," Raylan says, conviction wavering in his voice, eyes fixed on Boyd.   
"Oh," is all Boyd is capable of saying.   
Silence stretches between them like the quiet suserrus of birds at dawn.   
Raylan does not move, simply waits as if this quiet is expected, understood. Boyd isn't sure what to do. He never is, never has been sure when it came to Raylan but... He's beginning to think that this is par for the course.

"Which one is mine?"   
Raylan smiles, breath escaping between his lips as if he's been holding it tight in his chest. He looks down at them, shifts his hand until the rings slide over his wide palm.   
"This one."   
"Are you sure?"   
"Yes, Boyd."   
Boyd narrows his eyes.   
"How can you be so sure?"   
Raylan huffs.   
"Because I am."   
"They look identical to me."   
"They're not."   
Boyd plucks them from Raylan's hand, cages them in his fingers, and shakes.   
"Which one is it?"   
Raylan snorts, looks down at them. He spends a moment shifting them with light fingers that brush Boyd's skin.   
"This one."   
Boyd frowns.   
"How do you know?" He asks again but he feels like he's asking a different question.   
"Does it matter?"   
Boyd thinks to say, "Yes, it does," but he doesn't. He says instead, "I suppose we'll find out."   
Raylan shifts back so he's sitting on his foot, the other one still planted on the ground. He looks down, away.   
"You don't have to wear it."   
He's talking about the rings but there's a part of Boyd that knows that's not only what he means. He wonders briefly if that part is the old Boyd, if who he was was the person who could always understand the subtext of Raylan. It's a comforting and saddening thought.   
Boyd looks down at the rings, shifts them in his hand, then looks over to the man in front of him. There's truly only one way for Boyd to know.   
"Raylan," Boyd whispers, scooting forward, fingers curling around cool metal.   
Raylan looks up, something fiercely guarded in his expression.   
Boyd kisses him, light, soft, tentative, out of hope, out of some wild gamble.   
"I want to," he whispers, tasting whiskey and something sweet like ice cream. "I do."   
"You," Raylan pauses, lets out a breath, hisses, "You don't know that," with a startling intensity.   
Boyd kisses him again because he wants to and because he needs the distraction. Raylan makes this strange nearly subvocal noise, kissing back. There's this tension shivering in Raylan's lips, in the way he moves against Boyd. It might be restraint, desperation, he doesn't know. Boyd uses it to his advantage anyway, keeps Raylan busy with it while he slides the ring onto his finger. It settles something inside Boyd as if he's had an itch he didn't know about.   
He breaks the kiss, grabbing for Raylan's hands. Boyd finds them fisted against Raylan's thighs like tight knots. Raylan tries to kiss him again. Boyd shifts his head but that doesn't deter Raylan in the slightest. His lips become an insistent worship against Boyd's cheek, down his jaw, across his neck. Boyd groans, closing his eyes for a moment to simply enjoy. He's wanted this since the first time he dreamed.   
Touching Raylan's hands turns into a slight miscalculation in that it spurs them into motion, grasping and gripping at Boyd's knees, pushing up and against the denim covering Boyd's thighs.   
"Damn, boy," Boyd murmurs, bowing his head forward to nuzzle the side of Raylan's head. Raylan only grunts in reply, fisting the fabric gathered at Boyd's hips.   
It takes longer than intended, longer than Boyd wants, to get Raylan's left hand in his, to grip his wrist, and find his ring finger.   
The ring slides on easily, catching only slightly at the knuckle. Raylan hisses in a breath when he notices. Boyd holds his.   
The boy looks down at his ringed finger, then up at Boyd. There's something in his eyes when he looks at Boyd that Boyd can't interpret. It looks furious to him, hard anger but... But under that steely rage he thinks there's something else, something softer, something just as strong and overwhelming. Boyd tries to look the same way back; fierce and sure even though he's trembling on the inside.   
Raylan lets out an unsteady breath as he breaks eye contact. Bowing his head, he reaches out, spreads his left hand wide, and slides his fingers in between Boyd's.   
A thought strikes him, he doesn't know where from. He says it anyway.   
"For saints have hands that pilgrims hands do touch, And palm to palm is holy palmers' kiss."   
Raylan laughs, surprised, unbelieving. Boyd smiles, confused.   
"What?"   
Raylan just shakes his head in response, still laughing. He laughs so hard his body curls until he's resting across Boyd's legs, hand clutching at Boyd's.   
"What's so funny?"  
Raylan gets ahold of himself for the most part. He says, in between chortles, "not even losing your memory makes you less of a pretentious prick."   
Boyd frowns, digging the fingers of his right hand into Raylan's hair. The man closes his eyes, pushes his head into the touch.   
"Now, that's just unkind."   
Raylan shakes his head a little but not much as if afraid to dislodge Boyd's hand where it scratches at his scalp.   
"Never said was a bad thing..."  
Boyd hums, fascinated by the way Raylan has curled against Boyd's legs like a cat.   
"I'll have to take your word on that."   
Raylan nods, grunts, a small frown of concentration on his face.   
They stay like that for a long time; Boyd looking down at Raylan, fingers combing through his hair, and Raylan curled over Boyd's lap, eyes barely open slits that stare intently at their joined hands.   
It's silent, peaceful, affirming.

Eventually, Boyd begins to talk, thoughts drifting from his mind to his mouth in an easy melodic rhythm. Raylan is quiet, grunting or humming in reply, smiling, frowning. After some time he climbs up onto the couch, hand still clasped with Boyd's, and lays his head down on Boyd's thighs, eyes fixed up at Boyd, something content and heavy in his face, holding Boyd's hand to his chest as Boyd continues to pet his hair and talk.  
There's something restful and reassuringly familiar about it; something about the sight of this man intently watching Boyd talk with a small secret smile on his face that makes Boyd feel as if the world is right and perfect and at peace with itself. A man could easily call this sensation the comfort of arriving home after a long weary journey.   
Boyd tells Raylan this and the man laughs, tells Boyd he's full of shit. Boyd smiles, bows forward to lay a gentle kiss on Raylan's forehead.   
"It is the truth of my world, Raylan; a foundation to build the rest of my life on."   
Raylan stills at this, the smile slipping from his face.   
"Damn, boy. You got it bad," he mutters.   
Boyd grins large, teeth bared to the supine form in his lap.   
"I got you bad," Boyd replies then bites at Raylan's bottom lip.   
Soft and needful is the noise Raylan makes in return.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> There might be an epilogue at some point.


	5. Deja Vu

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Boyd struggles with himself and with his relationships. He attempts, in some form or another, to create what is missing while he tries to come to terms with what he's lost without knowing precisely what it is aside from a deep ache and a thick sense of loss.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I honestly could not resist. I really wanted to leave the story as it was but I couldn't. I'm sorry. This is probably going to ruin it but I can't not. I've always been the kid to fidget with something until it's useless and broken.

Boyd squints into the sun, peering past rays of summer sun to watch the man in the garden. There are no sounds for the moment save the muffled thump of metal into earth. He smiles, delighted, with feeling, when the man lets out a sharp curse, skittering away from a bush of weeds grown too tall in negligence, swatting at his arm.   
"There it is."   
Boyd turns his head, eyes lagging behind, to Ava, and smiles at her too.   
"There what is?"  
She smiles, leaning against his side and plucks his beer from his hand. She shakes her head then presses her mouth to the bottle where Boyd's had been moments ago.  
"Ava dear? There what is?"   
There's a thwacking noise behind Boyd that he knows without looking is Raylan levying the shovel against the bush. This will accomplish nothing but tire Raylan out and maybe mangle the thriving weed.   
"Nothing, Boyd."   
He takes his beer back with a quick hand.   
"That wasn't no nothing."  
She sighs, pulling away from him. Boyd frowns, feeling a tinge bereft at the loss of contact.   
"I was just thinking," she says, pauses, frowns. "'There's that look he always gets.'"   
Boyd slides his fingers across condensation, the glass slick and cool in his palm.   
"What look?"  
Ava smiles something secret, something a little bit sad, her hand alights on his cheek, feather soft and fleeting.   
"The look you always get when you're watchin' him."   
Boyd huffs and pulls her back in against his side, settling down with his head atop hers. She drapes her arm over his chest, props her curled legs on his thigh. They turn and watch Raylan use the shovel to lop at the root of the weed as if he had an axe and not something slightly bigger than a spade.   
"I used to be so envious when we were together," Ava whispers into his shoulder after a few moments. "Whenever I saw the way you'd look at him. I thought- I used to think, 'there's something there. Something he won't tell me.'"   
Boyd stills, his chest aching so painfully he cannot breath.   
"Ava..."   
"No," she hisses, head shaking. Her hair, tickling against his arm, slides like spider silk across his exposed flesh. "Don't use that tone with me, Boyd Crowder. I- I knew what I was doing when I cut you loose."   
She presses her face into his shoulder, kisses him there like it's a note passed in class while the teacher isn't looking.   
"I told you before I never knew a time when you weren't in love. It's not your fault it took me so long to realize who with."  
Because he has no words, no way to deny this, Boyd says nothing. Though he aches to say he loved her completely, that he loved her so fully that she eclipsed all of the world to him, and no other person, be it man, woman, or lawman, could have meant to him what she did when she held him in her arms as a lover.   
   
   
There's an ache that's settled into Boyd's intestines, low and familiar, whenever he's alone with Raylan. Now, clearing the kitchen table of leftover vegetables from their garden, and empty rib bones, is no different. Save the fact that they are not fully alone. Ava had drowsed during after dinner whiskey on the couch, drooping like a flower at sunset until she'd given up the pretense entirely and curled like a stray cat on their couch, gently snoring away the quiet susurrus of their evening.   
A touch on his hip, a chest ghosting against his back, Raylan reaches around Boyd for a plate. By the time Boyd presses back, Raylan is gone. Across the kitchen so quick it's magic. Boyd frowns, looks down at the plate in his hands, the gold band on his finger, and wonders what it means.   
He's happy, yes. So very glad but... Most nights his bed is still empty. He wants– more. So very much more. He just doesn't know how to ask for it, what he can reach for.

  
Rows upon rows of numbers, odd scribbles, and lines. They mean little to Boyd. Simply appear to be some language, once learnt, now half remembered. Boyd sighs, rubs at his eyes. He shouldn't but he still feels it's useless. He'll never understand these ledgers with all their columns. In, out, lost, gained. Accounting is not an easy task when one doesn't remember so much as a grade school class in math.  
"Boss."  
Boyd looks up, eyes taking a moment to adjust.  
"Yes, Jimmy?"  
Jimmy shuffles in the door, awkward, tense.  
"He's here."  
The ledger closes with a snap.  
"Thank you."  
Jimmy nods, frowning, and slides out of sight.

He's sitting at the bar, hat low over his eyes, fingers curled around a glass. Boyd can tell in the dim light from across the room that Raylan is tense. There's a stiffness in his hunched shoulders that screams uncomfortably alike to a kicked dog waiting for the next boot.  
Boyd's chest aches, wonders how many times Raylan has done this before, has come here before, just like this. He wonders if this used to be normal. He wonders often how much their interactions must seem like all too tangible ghosts to Raylan.  
He sits down next to him anyway.  
"What happened?"  
Raylan's head snaps up, turns to Boyd in one rigid movement. His lips stretch wide in a violent rendition of a smile. There's a redness to his cheek, round and angry.  
Boyd sighs, touching featherlight fingers to it.  
"Got into another fight I see."  
Raylan shakes his head and somehow manages to lean into and away from Boyd at the same time.  
"How do you do that?"  
Boyd looks away, pushing his hand up into the air to motion for a drink. Jimmy nods and begins to shuffle glasses and bottles around. He's long since stopped ordering anything in specific. Jimmy always knows what he wants.  
"Do what, my friend?"  
Raylan shrugs, takes a gulp of his drink.  
Boyd lays his hands on the table, twisting his torso towards Raylan.  
"I don't know."  
Raylan huffs.  
"No. You don't."  
Boyd says nothing as Jimmy slides a glass across the bar to Boyd. He has nothing he can say; knows no words for how to make the bitter tone flee from Raylan's voice.  
He drinks instead and silently wishes for that night where Raylan had laid his head down in his lap and smiled at him back. He wants it. Nothing but it.

"UNCLE BOYD!!"  
It's screeched across the aisle quickly followed by the singular stampede of child feet. The air leaves Boyd's lungs at impact.  
"Hello, Miss Willa," he says with a smile.  
Willa presses her face into his hip, clutching tight at his jacket.  
"Do you remember me?" She asks, face bright, smile missing teeth.  
"Yes," Boyd says, smiling. He cups the back of her head, his chest feeling so full and lovely. He's almost certain he loves this girl as much as he loves her father.

"I'm glad," Winona says over after dinner coffee, legs crossed tight, smile as bitter as her drink. "That he told you."  
Boyd has to take a sip from his coffee to cover the face he nearly makes. He can't help but think she's not so glad. He can't help but suspect she wants to take back certain things now far past their expiration.  
"Have you– no. I'm sorry. I don't mean to pry."  
Boyd sets his cup down carefully, feeling nervous.  
"Have I what?"  
Willa imitates the sound of a crashing car as she careens a monster truck into the couch.  
Winona shakes her head.  
"No. I shouldn't."  
Boyd smiles.  
"You're already halfway there, girl; might as well finish it."  
She sighs.  
"Have you... Remembered anything?"  
Boyd's smile drops as an ocean of lack fills his stomach.  
"I'm sorry. See? I shouldn't've asked!"  
Her hand touches his lightly, softly. It doesn't make anything better the way it does when Raylan touches him. He still stretches a smile onto his face for her.  
The front door opens at this point. Willa yelps, "daddy!" And rushes the door.  
"Hey, baby girl."  
She's scooped up like a gaseous ball of giggles.  
"Uncle Boyd remembered me!"  
Raylan stills, eyes hard and wide when they glance Boyd's way.  
Boyd quickly shifts away from Winona, closing in on himself with a shake of his head. The shine leaves Raylan's eyes and Boyd feels as if he's failed.

Raylan is jumpy in bed, skittish like an unbroken colt. Boyd tries to help, lays still and breathes even from his side but it's to no avail. Raylan still jerks, twists, turns, as if the mere thought of sharing a bed with Boyd is an anxious one.

Raylan is gone and the bed is cool when he wakes. Boyd reaches a hand across the empty space and thinks, "is this a case of worse or of better?" But doesn't bother to ask out loud for fear he might be overheard.

Winona takes him out to breakfast at the only diner in town. Boyd twitches in his seat the whole time, anxious and jittery, and watches Willa scrawl outside the lines on her placemat, tiny blue headphones over her ears.  
"Once," Winona starts, pauses, scrapes her bottom lip with her top row of teeth like a white rake against taupe earth. "Once we were friends– of a sort– Raylan being who he is, we... We would do this often. Go out for breakfast or lunch and share stories, talk about the weary world of being the spouse of a LEO."  
Boyd raises a disbelieving eyebrow as the waitress refills his coffee.  
Winona shakes her head, smiling.  
"I'm not saying it was instantaneous. But once the whole... Thing became less of a- a- a Thing, we did that. It was... Nice."  
Boyd's coffee scalds his tongue and he smiles tightly around the pain. He wants to. It feels like it might be what he needs but... He doesn't.  
They break their fast in silence, punctuated by Willa's stunted child voice singing to her music.  
"You can talk to me, Boyd," Winona insists as she snatches the check from under his hand. "I want to help."  
The problem is that he doesn't think she can no matter her desire.

There is something like the soft calling of home in the chirp of frogs and insects when sitting on the porch late at night. Boyd has a beer, a full stomach, and a pleasant listlessness in his body from a day completed. This peace is only slightly marred by the weight of doubt in his stomach and the slow fidgets of the woman next to him.  
Boyd takes in a deep breath, deciding.  
He begins to speak. Winona does at the same time. Their words clash together in a nervous wreck. Boyd smiles, gestures to her.  
"I'm sorry," he says. "You go."  
"No, no! You first."  
"Are you sure?"  
She nods, smiling back with her large eyes and comely face lit in friendliness. He wonders if butter would melt on her tongue.  
"I–" Boyd looks down, not suddenly nervous but feeling its immediacy acutely. "Raylan doesn't– did he ever pull away from you? Did he... Was he there but you could tell he was only so in words?"  
Winona's smile turns soft and salty, her head dipping until her eyes fix on her nails.  
"Yeah," she murmurs. "That's our boy; always getting himself all twisted up thinking too much. Has he been... Distant with you?"  
Boyd swallows, nods, shame flaring on his face. It's enough to take away the flush of possessiveness over her use of 'our boy.'  
"In mind and in body," he says, the words bitter on his tongue.  
"Oh!" Winona exclaims in a gently startled voice. "Well..."  
She nervously tucks her hair behind her ear.  
"I've found," she pauses to clear her throat. "That often times Raylan needs a solid kick in the ass to dislodge his head from it."  
Boyd laughs, startled, relieved. She smiles back, hair sliding over her shoulder as she tilts her head.  
"I think I might just come to love you all over again," Boyd says in between chuckles.  
Winona's face goes tight at that but the smile does not fade. Boyd can't help but smile in apology at her. He's taking such liberties.

  
Her face becomes illuminated by the approach of headlights.  
"You ever need anyone to talk to about all this, I'm just a phone call away, Boyd. Don't hesitate."  
Boyd nods in a promise he doesn't know he's going to keep as wheels head up the drive.  
"I'll keep that in mind..."

 

Boyd's eyes are fixed on an old water stain on the ceiling. He's trying to sleep. Truly, he is. But Raylan won't stop fidgeting. An hour. An hour he's been lying here listening to Raylan toss and turn and grunt and flip his pillow and push the covers off and pull them back up.

He's going to murder this man.

  
Raylan sits up, flips his pillow, punches it out of shape, and lays back down. His feet kick ineffectively against the sheets. That's it.  
"For the love of the lord!" Boyd exclaims, rolling onto his side and reaching out. Raylan stills as Boyd's hands wrap around him. Boyd hauls- hauls- Raylan across the bed and into his arms, wrapping himself around Raylan, forcing his head into the nook between neck and shoulder.  
"Be still, goddamnit," Boyd hisses into Raylan's hair.  
Raylan huffs, twitches in Boyd's grasp, but stills without comment.  
Boyd sighs in relief, tightens his grip, and closes his eyes.  
This is– lord, this feels so right.  
Raylan is asleep before Boyd finishes the thought.

 

For the first time in Boyd's admittedly short memory, he dreams of nothing. When he wakes, the sky has only just begun to pinken the room, birds sing in a decidedly sleepy way, and there is weight on him. He looks down.  
The sheets were lost at some point, kicked into a tangle around feet. Boyd could care less. He's sleep-warm and rested with a man sprawled across him as if he is no more than an unfeeling pillow. Raylan has bent and stretched himself out all at once. It seems an impossibility to Boyd but there the boy is; head on Boyd's chest, arms tucked just under Boyd's sides, one leg diagonal across the bed, the other bent so that his shin is pressed into Boyd's thigh. It's altogether a ridiculous position.  
Boyd smiles, feeling as soft and rumpled as Raylan's hair.  
"This is what I want," he says to himself, comforted by the lack of awareness his bed partner has, his vulnerability. Boyd runs his hand lightly over the expanse of back presented to him, admiring the way it curves just slightly to accommodate Raylan's position. "You..."  
"You," he says but cannot finish his confession.  
Instead, he leaves his hand pressed into the small of Raylan's back, the other coming to curl possessively around the nape.  
"You."


	6. Ghosts

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> There are rocks in the soil and the land needs tilling to be ready to seed, to grow. 
> 
> Some things go right and the rest of it goes wrong. Boyd comes to a sudden, painful, understanding of what Raylan might be feeling.   
> This is either two steps forward, one back, or, a stumble along the road.

Boyd wakes up alone, face pressed into the empty side of the bed. He rolls over, stares at the ceiling feeling... Oddly hollow and sleep warm. The light of the morning sun casts the room in gold.   
"Is this normal?" He wonders to himself out loud. "Are you always so absent from my day?"   
He stirs, sits up, letting sheets that managed without his help to re-cover him from the night before fall away.   
"My name is Boyd Crowder," he says, staring at the glint of his ring. "And I love a man who is never here."   
Somehow, it feels both more like a lie and the most terrible truth at the same time. He stays there for some time, staring at that ring, wondering what it truly means. Were they ever close? Did they ever sit together on the porch, sharing a beer, watching the sun go down together like he and Ava do? Had they ever twined together like spaghetti around a fork, close and close and closer until they were tangled up? Did Boyd ever know the taste of Raylan's lips? Did it ever become so familiar they tasted of nothing? Of himself?   
"Boyd."   
He looks up. Raylan stands at the door, fully dressed but unshod.   
There's a pinched look on Raylan's face. Closed off, he thinks, but a part of his brain supplies the word, "scared," to him.   
"Yes, Raylan?"   
The man looks down, tendons on his neck jumping, jaw flexing, as his fingers curl around air. He looks up and it's all gone, face now placid, blank.   
"There's coffee. Pancakes," Raylan says then turns sharp from the doorway. Magic. He is always gone so fast. Too fast for Boyd to grab, to hold on to.

Boyd watches Raylan from the porch while he drinks his coffee, eats his pancakes off the plate balanced in his lap, as Raylan works the soil of the garden with gloved hands.   
He's doing something, reaching in to loosened soil with his hands, fisting it, churning it. Boyd is possibly a little transfixed by the flex of his forearms, the outline of his body as he kneels into the dirt, the curve of his back. It turns his stomach, dries his mouth, hunger evaporates from him, leaves him wanting somewhere lower in his gut.   
He needs to know. He must know. There is no way around it to continue. Is this a matter of worse or of better?   
Maybe, a part of his brain supplies, Boyd is the one holding himself apart, away from Raylan. Maybe Boyd needs to close the distance if Raylan is unable or unwilling to do so.   
There's a pair of work gloves lying next to some garden tools.   
Boyd, decided, drains the last of his coffee, swallows the last bite of pancake, and sets the dishes to the side, on the small table to his right, and stands.   
He picks the gloves up, walks out to Raylan, smiles when the man looks up. He's going for that confident, sly, smile he saw in the photo.   
Raylan's lips part, his body stills where he is on all fours. The shape of his back changes subtly. Curves down in a way Boyd's eyes can't ignore. When he looks back towards Raylan's face, there's a darkness to his eyes, a hunger Boyd thinks might match his own. It's gone in the blink of an eye.   
"Tell me what to do," Boyd commands. Or. Tries to. He does not finish the sentence with, "to make you love me like you did."   
Raylan swallows, looks down, moves his hands in the dirt.  
"Gotta loosen the soil. Pull out any rocks or weeds. Like this."   
He pulls his right hand from the earth, a rock the size of a plum in his hand. Raylan holds it up, shakes dirt off of it, then tosses it out onto the driveway.   
Boyd nods. He can do this. He knows he can. He must.

The sun is hot, hotter. Sweat gathers on Boyd's skin like mosquitos on the surface of a still lake, his arms are sore, aching in tandem with his back. Strangely, his knees do not hurt but his thighs thrum, throb, with ever shift forward, backwards. It's silent while they work on this hot spring day.   
Boyd is in to it. He can't say why. The stretch of his body, the sun overhead, the earth loose under his fingers. It all combines together into a familiar, restful, trance-like labor. He keeps making these noises, deep in the back of his throat, high in his chest, like the start of words unfinished and unformed. With Raylan by his side, working the soil with him, he enjoys this. Cannot say why, but he does.   
He loses track of time, simply working, simply concentrating. He thinks of nothing until Raylan stops, rolls sideways away from him. Boyd looks over.   
"Why'd you stop?"   
Raylan smiles, shakes his head. He's covered in dirt. Disturbingly, Boyd wants to lick him clean like a mother cat.   
"We're done."   
Boyd pauses his hands, fingers curled into the earth, nails digging into the leather of his gloves, and looks around. Huh. They are. Boyd grins, laughs, sits back on his heels. His thighs ache most amazingly. He looks up to the sun, now directly above them, shading his eyes against the light.   
"That we are," Boyd says, turns to regard Raylan again.  
The man is smiling this small, thin line, eyes soft like the dirt below Boyd's knees. There's something... Almost there about the look. Something that causes Boyd's fingers to curl, his chest to ache.   
"My friend–"   
Raylan shakes his head, hauling himself to his feet.   
"Let's have lunch," Raylan nearly hums this, smile fixed on his face. He holds out his hand.   
Boyd grasps it firmly, heart racing, and lets Raylan help Boyd to his feet.   
"OK," he says, quiet, unable to repress his own smile. "OK."

It's leftover chicken sandwiches and beer for lunch. Not precisely the meal of champions but Raylan makes it, presents it to Boyd as if they've had this same meal hundreds of times before and Boyd– Boyd could love him for that, for giving Boyd a moment in which he can pretend that he already knows they've had this exact meal before.   
Again, it is silent. They stand with their backs against the kitchen counter, drink in one hand, sandwich in the other, both looking out the kitchen window at the garden. Raylan seems loose and relaxed and, maybe because of this, Boyd is too.   
"What's next?" Boyd asks after washing down the last of his sandwich.   
"Thought we'd try some corn this year. Maybe squash and melons, too. 'N' they got these tomato-in-a-basket things at the nursery."   
Boyd nods, sipping at his beer, resting the hand closest to Raylan on the counter. If he could just– move three inches, they'd be close enough Boyd could brush against him with his arm.   
"Pumpkins?"   
Raylan grins, pops the rest of his sandwich into his mouth, chews, swallows.   
"Want yer own pumpkin patch, Boyd?"   
Boyd smiles, delirious, shrugs.   
"Maybe I'd just like to see you harvest 'em."   
There's a huff at that but Boyd doesn't think it's angry. He turns his head because he wants to see Raylan, wants to look at the profile of this man. It feels too right to have him at his side.   
"Y' jus' wann' t' see me sweaty," Raylan almost purrs, rotating in place, leaning in to Boyd with a wide, light face, a bright, adoring smile. He presses his gritty, sweaty, forehead against Boyd's cheek, his crumby, beer scented lips against his jaw.   
Boyd's breath catches in his throat. The entirety of him seems to swell. For a moment, any sound he could make is jammed in his throat, soft and full, and Boyd _aches_.   
Raylan stiffens then, forehead grazing Boyd's hair. He pulls away slowly, as if afraid to startle some unseen snake in the grass, turns away, straightens his back, fixes his eyes out the window. They shine, hard and bright, and do not waver.   
Boyd still cannot speak, cannot move. His whole body is tense, is vibrating. He can still almost feel Raylan's breath against his skin, the remnants of his sandwich left by Raylan's lips a heaviness to the bristle of his cheek.   
Raylan forgot, he thinks. He forgot that Boyd doesn't remember the before. This realization hits him like scattershot to the stomach. He lets his breath out in one uneven exhalation.   
"Raylan—"  
Raylan sets his beer down and strides, quick, fast. His long legs take him out of the kitchen, out of the house, off the porch, before Boyd can formulate the rest of his sentence.   
Boyd watches as Raylan keeps going, straight through the garden, over the edges of the lawn. He's gone into the fields and the tall grass that surrounds the house.   
"Don't stop," is how Boyd was going to finish that sentence. Now, he wants only to yell, "come back."   
He doesn't want to admit to knowing what he did–on how it must have felt for him to play pretend that nothing had changed. Boyd stares down at the beer in his hand, regret a heavy taste on the back of his tongue. He tricked Raylan, however unconsciously, into forgetting that he is not the Boyd he knew. Perhaps, he never will be again.   
This is a matter of worse, not better, he decides as he downs the rest of his beer, picks up Raylan's abandoned bottle. He will never be the man Raylan loves. He killed him, somehow, and left this ghost in his place. Some creature that chants, "I am Boyd Crowder," without any true idea of what that means to the man he lives with. How Raylan must grieve for a walking, breathing, lie of a corpse.   
He wonders, as he wraps his lips where Raylan's had been on the bottle, how it must hurt to wake up every day next to a stranger that has Boyd Crowder's face.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Not sure how I feel about this one. Seems... Sudden.


	7. And Echoes

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Boyd is far more melodramatic than needs be. But so is Raylan. There must, after all, be some places where the two overlap.

Raylan is back to being gone most of the time. He still sleeps in the same bed as Boyd, stiff and still as a corpse crammed at the edge of the mattress and gone like a phantom by the time Boyd wakes.  
Boyd supposes it could count as progress, in a way, because now he knows what he did; how he wronged Raylan. It's a strangely familiar feeling.  
He's more careful now. Boyd is unsure if he means himself or Raylan but the end result is the same. The touches, before casual, unthinking, natural, have evaporated like condensation on a glass left in the sun. They do not talk.  
Boyd had tried once while they were making dinner. He'd started talking about the book he'd found under the bed- some book about early settlers and natives- but Raylan had stiffened right up, refused to cooperate, had gone as far as to leave the house on the pretense of getting more green beans (they had had enough) and had not returned for several hours. Long enough for the steaks to cool, the gravy to congeal.  
Boyd has not tried again. It's maybe too much of an imposition to Raylan for Boyd to talk of things the man he'd been had. He understands. It's not comfortable– to try and guess at things Boyd Crowder would talk of and avoid them. He's shooting blindly and hoping not to land a hit.

Boyd is lounging on the couch, a paperback he hasn't paid enough attention to to remember its name in his lap, a mug of coffee in his hand. It's late, he knows, and he feels tired but too tense to sleep. There's this thrumming in him like the instinct to act without the verbs he needs to do so. He can't concentrate, can only hear the sounds of Raylan washing dishes in the kitchen, the radio on low as he does so.  
The water turns off. Boyd turns a page thoughtlessly. Steps. They pause. Boyd looks up.  
Raylan is standing at the foot of the stairs, hand wrapped tight around the banister. He's looking at Boyd.  
There's some look on his face, a tightness to his shoulders. A muscle ticks in his jaw once, twice. Part of Boyd wants to say the look is... Needy but he's not sure why.  
Boyd slides the hand holding his book open along the page he has open, licks his lips, opens his mouth.  
Raylan turns away, climbs the stairs three at a time.  
Boyd curls his fingers against the page, looking down to see where his nails catch on it. He swallows, does not know what he should do. So he stays where he is, attempting to read but without taking in any of it. He feels maybe as if he's waiting. Raylan never returns. Boyd stays up until the sky is an irritated red and the birds begin their morning calls. He closes the book when he hears an alarm go off upstairs, sets it on the coffee table, stands with stiff joints, and heads into the kitchen.  
There is movement upstairs. Floorboards creak and whine. Boyd does not know the house well enough to track the movement, to know where they are. The shower turns on and Boyd, mouth dry, eyes scratchy, fixes coffee, scrambles eggs, fries bacon.  
The shower turns off, more protests of old floorboards abound.  
Boyd sets the table for two, arranges food on both plates, sets out two cups of coffee, a couple of water glasses.  
Steps hit the stairs when Boyd is setting the skillet off the range. They pause at the bottom, Boyd thinks.  
He pauses. It's silent, quiet. No one moves. Boyd hears a breath, the shift of feet. They head away from him.  
The front door opens, the screen door shrieks. Steps. A car starts. Silence.  
Boyd sits down at the kitchen table, stares across the table at the empty chair.  
He says nothing but he wants to.

He stops sleeping again though he's unsure exactly when he dropped his insomniac habits. Raylan stops being there at night all together most days. Boyd doesn't know where he goes, where (or if) he sleeps.

Ava is sitting on the couch when Boyd comes in from reading out in the fields. He likes it out there. The silence and inability to see any man made structure is appealing. He also loves to look at the sky and watch the clouds. It makes him feel oddly relieved.  
She pats the seat next to her, mouth tight. As he is bade, he sits.  
Her eyes fix on him, scrutinize, mouth tightening even farther into one hard thin line. She sighs this big breathy thing.  
"You dumb boys," she says, wraps her arms around him and pulls him close.  
Boyd goes willingly, pressing his face into her neck. He missed her, he realizes, so much his chest hurts. "Always getting yourselves all twisted up."  
Boyd is relieved he doesn't have to say a thing for her to understand. He loves her so much. They stay like that for what feels like an eternity.  
At last, when the sky begins to redden, a false sunset, Boyd speaks.  
"I don't know how to fix it," he says, throat itchy, voice rasping. "I don't even know what I lost."  
She shushes him, kisses his temple, her narrow fingers running through his hair.  
"Nothing, Boyd Crowder," she hisses. "You lost nothing."  
For a moment, he believes her.

They sleep together that night, wrapped tight around each other. Her wet sweet breath against his forehead. He tells himself not to dream, tries to listen. He does anyway.  
Of gunpowder and whiskey, a shaky voice that whispers, "don't die. Don't die. Don't die. I don't want you to leave me. You promised, boy. You promised," and wakes with a start, a gasp.  
He lays there, breathing heavy, head pillowed on Ava's shoulder.  
"My name is Boyd Crowder," he whispers to himself, afraid of waking her. "And I—"  
A noise, maybe. Or movement. He looks up, over to the door. There is a silhouette there, the shadow of a man. His shoulders are tense, hands fisted. He turns, slides back and away, is gone.  
Carefully, Boyd extracts himself from Ava so as not to wake her. He creeps from the room on bare feet, down the hall, descends the stairs.  
He's standing in front of the cabinet they keep the booze in. Boyd watches his arms move, his back shift, listens to the clink of glass.  
"Raylan–"  
His head tilts back. Boyd can tell he's downed whatever he put into that glass in one pull.  
Boyd waits, clasps his hands together, decides he doesn't like that, and let's them hang, fingers slightly curled, at his sides.  
"Thought— thought you stopped doing that."  
Boyd frowns.  
"Stopped doing what?"  
Raylan lays his hands out flat on the top of the cabinet, shoulders hunched.  
"That name bullshit."  
Boyd looks down, away.  
"Mostly. Sometimes I... I have these dreams."  
Raylan turns, Boyd thinks, or shifts. He can't look to speak.  
"They make me feel like, like, I'm forgetting all over again. I remember- I think I do as it is- I remember the sound of a gun, something wet, copper, vanilla, and all I do is beg but I don't know who I'm begging or for what purpose. All's I know is I cannot bear the pain of it."  
There's a clink, a clatter.  
Boyd looks up.  
Raylan is still standing at the bar, hands spread and flat on the table, shoulders tensed and hunched up. His weight is all on one hip, the opposite knee hangs with its own burden, leant against the other.  
Boyd swallows, curls and uncurls his fingers as if he's grasping imaginary rope.  
"I'm sorry, Raylan," he says. His heart is heavy as lead. "I did not mean to act so familiarly."  
Raylan's head shakes but for what, Boyd does not know.  
"Don't, Boyd. Just... Don't. Go back to bed. Ava's probably missing you."  
Boyd nods, shakes his head. He does not wish to leave. He wants to stay here. He wants to see if his hands can iron out the painful curve in Raylan's shoulders. If he can get back something he knows not what.  
"Goodnight Raylan."  
"Goodnight, Boyd."

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Ehhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh.

**Author's Note:**

> Feedback?


End file.
